


It's been a long way without you, my friend

by goodbyelover



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 13:25:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4626891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyelover/pseuds/goodbyelover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years later and they're both different. Yifan has questions and Zitao has answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's been a long way without you, my friend

**Author's Note:**

> I hesitated choosing to post this after the Sina interview (I wrote it several weeks beforehand), but I wanted it archived somewhere.

He doesn't see him until years later - though 'see' is a generous term, as he's parked on the couch with a beer and Zitao is pre-recorded on the TV in front of him. Zitao's acting career has been going smoothly, a little buddying up to Jackie- _da ge_ having done him well - his new movie is the most anticipated movie of the summer.

"Everyone has regrets," Zitao is saying with a laugh (he's controlling it now, it's not that high shriek that he normally has. Had? Yifan doesn’t know what his real laugh sounds like anymore.) "I mean, there are things I wouldn't change for the world, but I still have regrets."

"What's a specific regret?" the interviewer asks him, casual, as if he wasn't trying to get a confession of sorts.

But Zitao doesn't rise to the bait. A younger Zitao might have - Zitao had always had a habit of being entirely too honest. This one, with his sharp cheekbones and sharper jawline, just grins. 

"I regret being so angry when I was younger," he explains and there's sincerity in every movement, the way he leans in towards the interviewer, the tilt of his head, the light of his eyes. (Had Zitao always been so charming?) “I used to get so angry over a lot of things that honestly didn’t matter. You should always regret when you hurt people you care about. I’ll always regret that.”

The interview goes on and Yifan’s eyes linger, but those words repeat like a broken record in his head as he finishes his beer off and plays the game of trying to spot where Zitao’s old piercings are.

‘ _I’ll always regret that._ ’ Always, always, always.

***

What lingers for the evening ends up festering for months. He doesn’t know why he’s doing this when Zitao was the one who slammed the door and burned all the bridges. It’s been years, legitimate years, since they’d last spoken. (When Zitao had spoken of anger, he hadn’t been lying.)

Yet here they were, back in his hometown, on a bridge next to the waterfront. It's dark, the city lights glimmering on the water, and while Yifan's making some effort to blend in to the setting, Zitao comes striding in like he walked straight off the pages of a magazine (and Yifan tries to ignore the way his breath catches in his throat.)

In the years that had passed, Zitao has grown up, no longer the gangly yet soft boy he'd been before. Now he'd slimmed down, filled out, had a power in his stride that wasn't there before - he'd become a man, Yifan realized dimly.

"Hi," Yifan says, and it's stupidly simple for the first words they've spoken in nearly four years.

Zitao seems to agree, because he smiles as he leans against the bridge’s stone railing. “Hey, Yifan.”

"I love this place," Zitao says, when Yifan can't quite find the words to continue on. "We never really got to come here before, but it's always a nice visit."

It gives Yifan a jolt in his heart when he hears the word 'we'. He's gotten so used to bottling up that part of his life - you couldn't move on if you tethered yourself to the past - that such a blatant acknowledgement of it, of his time with Zitao, surprises him. 

(He doesn't think of how he feels about the word 'we' in conjunction to Zitao.)

Conversation is awkward, stilted, even when Zitao climbs up onto the stone wall to sit over the river, a move so childlike, it brings a smile to Yifan's lips. Yifan doesn't know why he expected anything else, he's never been known for his social skills, but somehow… somehow it's jarring that he's like this with Zitao.

As if reading his mind, Zitao sighs and shifts so they're facing each other properly, legs crossed for balance. "If you need to say something, you can just say it. I know I never gave you the chance last time.”

It's not so easy, Yifan hesitating as he picks over his words, stumbling a little as he speaks. "I just didn't get why you got so mad. You knew. We talked about it so many times and I thought you supported me, you urged me to do it over and over again and then… and then you were just mad. You threw me out of your life, Zitao. You've spent years ignoring me. I just don't get it."

Zitao's lips twist in a bitter smile as he holds his hands up in a small, helpless gesture. "What do you want me to say, Yifan?"

"The truth."

"That I was wrong?" Zitao snorted, and oh yeah, Zitao had changed, but he hadn't changed that much. "You already knew that. I mean, I may have held out for longer, but we both always knew."

"Then why didn't you _say_ anything?" Yifan demanded, because it stung. Even now, he knew that Zitao's cold shoulder had hurt him deeper than he'd admit out loud. "Four years, Zitao. It's been four years. Hell, I was the one who asked you to meet me here."

Zitao's jaw tightens as he jumps down. "Is that what you wanted? Me to come back, crying and begging you to forgive me?"

"No!" Yifan groans, yanking his hands through his hair, because this was eerily similar to before, though at least Zitao wasn't so intent on breaking everything in sight. "You know that's not what I… That's not what this is about!"

(Back then, Zitao had left behind broken hearts and broken furniture.)

"Then what is this about, Yifan, because it sure sounds like you want some big grand apology." Zitao's bristling up like a cat, his anger always a defense, but Yifan knows that he's staring to shut him out again, and that hadn't been the point.

"I just want to know why you did that to me! I deserve to know, because you said it was what you wanted and then you turned around and you tore me apart."

"Because I thought you loved me enough to stay," Zitao yells at him, fists clenched, body rigid. Yifan falls silent as he realizes there's tears in Zitao's eyes.

As quickly as the anger came to Zitao, Yifan watched it fade, replaced by regret and sadness. 

"What do you want me to say?" Zitao repeated, softer this time, dabbing at his eyes with the hem of his shirt. "I knew it was best for you, Yifan. We were all hurt by what they were doing to us and you needed someone to tell you it was the right thing to do. But I… I wanted to stay so badly and I wanted you there with me."

Yifan makes an aborted move forward before stopping. The time has taken away his right to hold and comfort Zitao, and he knows he has more to say.

"I was so fucking pissed at you," Zitao continues on. "I shouldn't have been, but I was. I just wanted you to feel a fraction of how much it hurt when it felt like you'd decided to just drop me. I knew it was what you wanted to do, what you needed to do. I know they were hurting you. They were hurting all of us. But you were my last piece of _home_."

"So I'm sorry," Zitao says, and he's miserable and trying to do that thing where he makes himself as small as possible (which had always been hilarious, except for the part that Zitao only did it when he was unhappy or scared.) "I should have supported you more. I should have at least told you that you did the right thing or made up for… for what I said."

Yifan watched him, and old habits died hard, because there was nothing more he wanted to do than quietly hold Zitao. "Why didn't you?"

"You were happy," Zitao confessed, sniffling, his face a blotchy red, scrunched up in misery. "You were so happy, everything was going so well for you… Why would you even want to hear it from me?"

"Because I missed you, you dumbass," Yifan said, with a deep, long sigh as he finally, finally caved and just wrapped his arms around Zitao's shoulders. He'd honestly been wondering if Zitao had secretly hated him this entire time, relieved that it wasn't the truth, but saddened that Zitao had been carrying that regret with him for so long.

"D-don't call me a dumbass, you f-fuckwad," Zitao tried as he burrowed into Yifan's embrace. Once, early on in their lives, Zitao had told Yifan that his hugs were Zitao's favorite because Yifan was the only person who could make Zitao feel properly hugged.

"You could just say you missed me too," Yifan said, smiling as he tucked his chin against Zitao's hair and squeezed gently. 

Things weren't going to just be magically fixed, he knew. More things needed to be said, questions needed to be asked. Just because Zitao had agreed to this small moment, didn't mean he was ready to let Yifan back into his life. Yifan wasn't sure if he was ready for _Zitao_ back in his life either.

But that could wait. For now…

For now, he was home, surrounded by everything he held dear to him, and Zitao was tucked against his shoulder like he belonged there.

(And that was something he'd never regret.)


End file.
